DIRECTED BY ALAN TANNER

It was only four years ago that Tilly and the Wall burst like a popping balloon onto the independent music scene. A potent combination of sing-song boy-girl vocals, acoustic guitars, keyboard accents and a tap dancer instead of a drummer, the Omaha-based five-piece sang songs about not wanting to grow up, losing your love to the road, the urge to force the night as far as you could take it and more. Their debut, Wild Like Children, was a revelation to anyone who’s ever wanted to sing their hearts out like vocalists Neely Jenkins and Kianna Alarid; anyone who’s ever wanted to pummel big chunky chords from their acoustic guitar or keyboards like vocalist/guitarist Derek Pressnall and keyboardist Nick White; anyone whose love of rhythm meant letting their bodies create the song’s beat through motion like tap dancer Jamie Pressnall. Their follow-up, Bottoms of Barrels, pushed their sound one step forward, taking Tilly’s signature point of view of “we” to new heights: they told us we didn’t have to back down and close our eyes to go to sleep; we could shout for our freedom; we could wake up your mothers and start a commotion, and this youthful excitement would never ever stop.And then something changed. Kind of.

Tilly and the Wall decided it might be time to move that energy of declarative exuberance in another direction. After extensive tours of Europe, Australia, and Japan with the likes of CSS and Lightspeed Champion, in addition to their first time playing at the Reading/Leeds Festival, Coachella, and Summer Sonic, the band knew they had to open their heads and their hearts to all they were seeing, and use those experiences to the fullest. When they finally came back home, they went back to their old stomping grounds, artist-in-residence center The Bemis Center for the Contemporary Arts in Omaha, where they wrote Bottoms of Barrels, and began to work on what would become their most collaborative effort to date, each person throwing his or her songwriting hat in the ring more than they had previously. Drawing on everything from nature and magic to sex, rivalries and astrology, and featuring more instruments, voices and bodily percussion than their last two records put together, Tilly and the Wall have begun to forge a brand new musical path for themselves. One listen to their newest album, and you know it’s a special journey indeed, one we are very thrilled to take with them.

The album, produced by the acclaimed Mike Mogis, has no title. It could be called “O,” because its cover is just that: an oval-shaped frame for the artwork that will go inside of it. As a band who surround themselves not only with artistic friends, but also artistic fans, Tilly and the Wall have invited everyone in their community to contribute to the cover art for their record. O will have limited edition runs of handmade prints available by different artists that will act as the record’s cover, giving the band’s fans a unique piece of art for both their album and their walls. Each month, the record will have a different cover; or, of course, you could very well create your own. The frame of the cover art allows the listener to put him/herself into the album, and believe us: this is a record into which you’ll want to pour yourself.

O is Tilly and the Wall’s most cohesive, sonically experimental album yet. In addition to building a tack piano for certain songs, the band toyed with percussion much more than their previous efforts, recording Jamie’s taps through a variety of different amplifiers and floors to give each song its own distinct rhythm. Opener “Tall Tall Grass” is classic Tilly – strummed acoustic guitar, Neely and Kianna’s harmonies and a tale detailing a love lost to the seasons. It is followed by a ten-person stomp troop recorded in an Omaha school gym marching out the beat to “Pot Kettle Black,” a cymbal-smashing, hand-clapping ode to shit-talking, which immediately tumbles into “Cacophony,” with its three-part harmonic layers and rambling horns, and “I Found You,” a call and response Odyssey of sorts whose narrator is always searching and always walking through one season to the next. “Jumbler,” featuring an all-girl tap trio and percussive pots and pans, is carried by a 50’s-esque piano part, while “Chandelier Lake,” the album’s centerpiece, is dreamy, fuzz-laced, and filled with broken organs, detailing a place where the water meets the land and life comes together in a mysterious way. The track is one of many on O whose narrative details the mixing of the personal and the organic world – songs frequently feature grass, flowers, blood, trees, snow, water, dust, sand, trash, electricity and gardens, all tied up with loss, love, need and exploration. The record closes with “Too Excited,” a stomper of a song packed with group vocals and “yeeeeah!” choruses. With its massive dose of high energy, hip-shaking attitude, it’s the sort of song that reminds you why you fell for Tilly and the Wall in the first place. And if you’re like us, you’ll quickly hit the “play” button to begin the journey that is O all over again…